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banjiepixel

Let's talk about the Glory Kill mechanic

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Little bit background here. I have been classic Doom fan for almost two decades, almost completely skipped Doom 3. So I have been played Doom 2016 and it has started feel pretty good. But one thing that I have never liked it about is the glory kill mechanic. I personally think that the game could be better without it. But it is flashy and I see why they wanted to put it in. But there are some thing I really do not like. I think enemies shouldn't go to a stun state when they are ready for glory kill. Combat would flow alot better if enemies would keep on moving and attacking as normal, just give them glow so player knows that they can be glory killed. Player movement is also bit too slow for gameplay where you are supposed to go alot around the arena killing stunned enemies with glory kills, simple sprint mechanic would had fixed this. Also the glory kills make berserk powerup be less impactful. But most of all, glory kills mechanic seems to be poorly defined and explained.

 

Could someone help me understand the Glory Kill mechanic better. I know that it gives health to you but is there real reason not to spam glory kills as much as possible? Are there any actual disadvantages outside of the actual effort needed to trigger them? If there aren't, that seems like poor gameplay mechanic balance. Normal kills should have atleast some meaninful advantage compared to glory kills considering how much flashier glory kills are.

 

And I want to know what others think about the mechanic. Feel free to also share your ideas on how it could had been better. I also heard that there is a mod that removes the mechanic from the game, does anyone know if it is worth a try?

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I think that glory kill mechanic is genius, it forces you to seek the fight. When you are low on health, you do not retreat, you advance. It creates the unique dynamic that forces you to become a real slayer. It also adds an element of tactics with stunning and getting prioritized targets first. I thought that it'd be a one trick pony and I get bored with glory kills really fast, but nope – they keep pumping me up for the entire game. I don't think berserk powerup suffers, because of it. Glory Kill is a taste sample and Berserk powerup is a full-time trip.

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5 hours ago, incel said:

I think that glory kill mechanic is genius, it forces you to seek the fight. When you are low on health, you do not retreat, you advance. It creates the unique dynamic that forces you to become a real slayer. It also adds an element of tactics with stunning and getting prioritized targets first. I thought that it'd be a one trick pony and I get bored with glory kills really fast, but nope – they keep pumping me up for the entire game. I don't think berserk powerup suffers, because of it. Glory Kill is a taste sample and Berserk powerup is a full-time trip.

 

Giving player a reason to get very close and personal with the demons is great but I think there should be more things to do in those situations. Glory Kills are not very skill based and I feel that it would had been more rewarding mechanic if there would had been better melee abilities and the glory kills would had been tied to those. Doom Eternal seems to add dash abilities that will make close combat work better and the grappling hook should make the transitions between being close and being far smoother. Doom 2016 is starting to seem like it was too conservative with the new mechanics and it makes the combat feel messy. Pacing the combat just feels off to me, all that stopping of things that the glory kills system in causing and sluggish movement speed of Doom Slayer seems to hurt the smoothness of the combat.

 

Unless there is something major that I am missing, Doom 2016 glory kills mechanic doesn't seem to be very good. It seems to hurt the game more than helps. It seems to mostly just be there just for the eye candy like the Mortal Kombat's fatalities. But atleast in Mortal Kombat, fatalities do not hurt the pacing of the actual combat.

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I don't think that overcomplicating the system is a way to go, I'm hazy about upgrades you collect, since they change weapons so much (though I like that they give you additional stuff to do with this extra objectives). I certanly don't want more abilities, I like my killing in DOOM simple, simple like a blow with a hammer. The complexicity should come from the monsters, like them having vulnerable openings or weak points, specific behavior.

 

Glory kill mechanic was the only thing that left from the original "Call of Doom" project. I think it says something.

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16 minutes ago, incel said:

I don't think that overcomplicating the system is a way to go, I'm hazy about upgrades you collect, since they change weapons so much (though I like that they give you additional stuff to do with this extra objectives). I certanly don't want more abilities, I like my killing in DOOM simple, simple like a blow with a hammer. The complexicity should come from the monsters, like them having vulnerable openings or weak points, specific behavior.

 

Just improving the melee would had helped alot. Maybe it could had given upgrades like all weapons have. And it would had been cool if every weapon would had their own unique type of melee attack instead of all of them being the same with just slightly different stats. I fail to see how these would had made things overcomplicated. The combat design itself is already pretty repetitive and you mostly just shoot the demons with your guns and spam glory kills. There is very little you can do to actually have fun and do creative things with the combat mechanics. Having more depth in gameplay mechanics isn't same as the game being harder to play.

 

24 minutes ago, incel said:

Glory kill mechanic was the only thing that left from the original "Call of Doom" project. I think it says something.

 

And rest of the Doom 2016 is pretty much just a combination of Doom and Devil May Cry. Glory kills feel more like something lazily copied directly from God of War games. It makes the mechanics messy and there is too much focus on it. So saving the one decent idea from "Call of Doom" and combining it lazily with bunch of great ideas from much better games will only make the glory kills system look even worse. I think it has potential but combat mechanics need to be refined more to work better with it.

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I don't see Dooslayer as a melee guy, sure he likes to be close and personal, but, again, as I think, he should stick to his guns and let the player show his mastery by creatively using them. I haven't played Doom for a while and can't quite remember, but I'd liked to see weapons made more versatile, like in Unreal Tournament or Resistance, for example. Maybe it's redundant and stupid, but I'd loved to be able to triplejump with shotgun, like in TF2 or have rocketlauncher and grenadelauncher combined in one weapon. Melee – maybe a simple shove and that's enough.

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53 minutes ago, incel said:

I don't see Dooslayer as a melee guy, sure he likes to be close and personal, but, again, as I think, he should stick to his guns and let the player show his mastery by creatively using them.

 

Is that because of history of the Doom series or is that based on Doom 2016 alone? I ask because Doom 2016 took clearly many elements from character action games and I have been thinking about how some people feel if Doom has more of those elements in the future. Having more and better melee would be definitely one those character action game elements that I would like see in future Doom games.

 

But I can see why some would like to see Doom remain as more basic first person shooter. Especially many pc gamers are not very used to games like the Devil May Cry series and how fun their deep combat systems can be. But it does seem that Doom Eternal will have even more character action game elements in it. It's pretty clear that it is the direction they want for their series. I actually feel that they have been just very careful with them so first person shooter players can get slowly used to them. I can see definity Doom going eventually full Devil May Cry on us, well... as much as first person shooter actually can be. But they seem to really want to redefine what a first person shooter can be.

 

1 hour ago, incel said:

Maybe it's redundant and stupid, but I'd loved to be able to triplejump with shotgun, like in TF2 or have rocketlauncher and grenadelauncher combined in one weapon. Melee – maybe a simple shove and that's enough.

 

Actually atleast some weapons having alternative uses could had been very cool. Imagine for example it would be possible extend your air time with super shotgun shots or something like that. I would had liked to see the ability juggle monsters with your shots. Let's say you shoot rocket at monsters feet, they launch into air and you could use heavy assault rifle to keep them in air. 

 

Also, how would you feel if there was a simple shove but there would also a much stronger punch that is used by holding down the melee button for 3-5 seconds and then releasing it? If you would not like it, you could totally ignore it even existing but it would give a new melee option in combat for those who want to use it.

 

It could be so fun to use it on a monster that really seems annoy you with its behavior. It would be also great tool when you are low on ammo and you do not have chainsaw fuel. I do not want it to be instakill, atleast on actual demons, but let's say that you do 2-4 on monster, most of them die to that. Yes it could seem pretty powerful but you also need skill to use it. Timing would be extremely important and you couldn't shoot while charging up your super punch. How does all of this sound to you?

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I just hate the glowing monsters, the game allready messed up it's gore by making corpses disapear way to early and then you get to see the fleshy demons glowing like some night lamps

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Just now, ([zen3001]) said:

I just hate the glowing monsters, the game allready messed up it's gore by making corpses disapear way to early and then you get to see the fleshy demons glowing like some night lamps

 

It can be disabled, you know.

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Generally I find the best way to play is to at first ignore glory kills for the most part and only start using them when I need something. The way the glory kill system is scaled is to give larger bonuses the less you have of the two critical resources in the game, health and ammo (ignoring the chainsaw's special ammo kill). So if you're at 95 health you might get 5 health from a standard glory kill, so who cares. if you're at 5 hp you get plenty and get a lifeline back into the game.

 

This is the really smart part about the glory kill balance and is what the devs originally billed as "push forward" combat. In most FPSes when you get critically low on health, shields and so on you're forced to play in a slow, campy and conservative way to survive, choking the pace of the game. In Doom 16 the closer you get to dying the more the game actually rewards you for being aggressive and reckless, keeping the pace intense and which is why it feels fine to play on a high difficulty and yo-yo wildly between stacking up and nearly dying, just focusing on killing efficiently. Unlike classic Doom things like health and armor spawns on the map are handy but not a big deal because every enemy is a walking dispenser when you need it most.

 

Then later in the game when you start getting runes glory kills get more interesting for gameplay because a good amount of them modify glory kills and synergise in interesting ways. For example I like Seek and Destroy + Blood Fuelled because you can line up glory kills, launch into them from a long range and pretty much teleport+haste around the map far faster than your enemies can move. Or maybe you want to squeeze extra ammo and armour out of enemies instead, etc. It's flexible.

 

Glory killing all the time can be really monotonous so the best thing to do is just remember that whilst playing they're completely optional until you need them.

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^ I tried to play it like this but I couldn't resist Glory killing, the enemies just kinda stand in one place begging to be glory killed when they start flashing, disabling the flashiness didn't help much because I was still be able to tell when it was time to Glorykill them because they just stop moving and display stagger animations.

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so I tried playing with the highlights disabled and it turned out to fix some of the problems every in this thread seems to be having with it and even more.

not only does this make it look better but it makes it more challenging to get a glory kill, you have to watch if the monsters are on the ground, most of the time you will just end up killing them with your weapons unless you tried to go for glory kills, that way they really end up being way more rewarding too.

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